The Lover

“No.”

His stubbornness stung her to fresh anger. “It seems to me that any fool can wield a sword. But it takes a strong leader to resolve differences without bloodshed.”

Niall scowled up at the smoke-darkened rafters. “You are meddling in affairs you know nothing about.”

“Well, I am trying to learn.” She ground her teeth in vexation. “I agreed to wed you to save my clan, but ’twill have been for naught if you insist on maintaining your blind hatred. It is madness to continue fighting. As chieftain, Niall, you are the key to settling the feud. The men of Clan Duncan answer to you now. They will follow your lead.” She hesitated. “You’ll think me a stubborn gomeril, I know, but Keith Buchanan seemed sincere.”

Niall grunted. “I think you are uncommonly gullible. You’ve allowed yourself to be used as a dupe. Meeting him here was the height of folly. The bloody Buchanans would like nothing more than to put horns on me.”

“Keith Buchanan harbors no feelings of desire for me, I tell you.”

“I dispute that, lass, but ’tis beside the point. Did it never occur to you that Owen’s kin would gleefully seduce the wife of his foe simply to even the tally with me?”

It was Sabrina’s turn to scoff. “What would it matter to you if he did cuckold you? Only your pride would suffer.”

Niall’s eyes narrowed at her. “You’ll not take him for a lover, do you ken me?”

Realizing the futility of arguing, Sabrina lay back down with a flounce. Her anger smoldering anew, she stared up at the ceiling. “I thought ours was to be a modern marriage, that we would go our separate ways. You shouldn’t care if I took a lover. You never wished for this damnable union, you told me so last night.”

He frowned. “I said I would consider allowing you a discreet affair once you presented me with heirs—after an appropriate interval. But I’ll not countenance you with a bloody Buchanan.”

“Very well, then. I promise you, I will choose someone other than a Buchanan when the time comes.”

Rolling on his side, Niall stared down at Sabrina, his gaze boring into hers. Her foolish insistence on peace annoyed him less than her threat to take other lovers.

After a moment of strained silence, he reached his hand up to close possessively around her throat, where her pulse beat sure and warm. Inexplicably he was filled with the fierce urge to prove she wanted no lover but him.

Slowly he trailed his fingers down to cover her bare breast. He felt her nipple tighten, felt the sensual shiver that ran through her body. The same shiver surged through him in a savage stroke of need.

“Don’t…” she whispered, shutting her eyes.

“I thought we had settled this,” Niall replied, his jaw hardening. “You’ll not deny me, wife. You’ll not deny yourself…”

Bending, he covered her lips with his own, pressing his swelling flesh into her soft belly, feeling a grim satisfaction at the helpless moan of surrender Sabrina gave as she twisted against him.

He made love to her slowly this time, demanding everything she had to give and more, wringing cry after cry of ecstasy from her, refusing to relent until she lay gasping and shuddering and pleading with him for surcease.

In the heated aftermath, Sabrina sank into an exhausted slumber, but Niall found sleep elusive. He held her in the protection of his embrace, frowning at some vague point in the distance.

What the devil was happening to him? Sabrina’s interference in clan affairs had sorely vexed him, but that wasn’t what had set his blood to boiling or aroused such intense feelings of fury and betrayal within him.

Remembering their tempestuous confrontation by the loch, Niall grimaced. He’d been angry enough to strike Sabrina—he who had never touched a lass in anger in his life. In truth, his own conduct dismayed him even more than the rash actions of his gullible young wife. He had behaved like a grasping, jealous husband.

It had to be jealousy. Mere male pride could not account for his rage when he’d spied Sabrina in Keith Buchanan’s arms. Nor could bitter hatred for an enemy clan explain his covetousness. He would have reacted that way with any man.

Niall shook his head, wondering how he’d become so obsessed with his own bride. He’d thought his fascination with Sabrina would fade to indifference in time, yet his passions had only grown stronger. The more determined he was to deny his desire, the more fierce his need grew to possess her. Even now he was stunned by the driving urgency he’d felt to brand Sabrina as his alone.

Absently he fingered a damp tendril of her hair as he contemplated his remarkable madness.

Jealousy was an alien notion to him. He’d never been so enamored of a woman that he cared if she took other lovers. He’d never felt such primitive possessiveness toward any lass…until Sabrina.

There was no explanation for the ravenous need she incited in him. Beautiful women had been a constant in his life since adolescence, and he’d managed to elude being snared by any of them. Sabrina was no raging beauty certainly, and yet…she was beautiful when her lustrous eyes flashed with fury,

more beautiful still when he had her naked and hungry beneath him, her skin flushed with desire, her eyes flaming with passion.

He wanted her beyond reason. She could stir up a maelstrom of need and hunger in him that defied logic. Her body fired his blood in a way no lass’s ever had.

He hadn’t foreseen that. Sabrina could make the fire in him blaze up till it raged out of control.